Blog – Page 9 – Center for Effective Lawmaking

2022-2023 Small Grant Awards Announced

2022-2023 Small Grant Awards Announced It is with great pleasure that we announce the Center for Effective Lawmaking’s 5th annual small grant awards and recipients. These grants are awarded each year to scholars and researchers who have consistently produced impressive contributions in their areas of study. With the allocation of these small grants, the Center seeks to support and promote the next generation of CEL research in hopes of expanding the overall knowledge associated with legislative effectiveness. Previous grant recipients have made remarkable strides in furthering this mission and we…

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October 11, 2022

Conversations with Lawmakers

Discussing Legislative Effectiveness with Representative Will Hurd

Discussing Legislative Effectiveness with Representative Will Hurd Former Representative Will Hurd served as the U.S. representative for Texas’s 23rd congressional district from 2015 to 2021. Representative Hurd was identified by the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) as being one of the top 10 most effective Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House during his first term in Congress, as well as being the third most effective freshman lawmaker within his class. CEL Co-Directors Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman recently sat down with Representative Hurd to discuss his time in Congress. Among…

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September 14, 2022

Legislative Research

Call for 2022-2023 Small Grant Awards

Call for 2022-2023 Small Grant Awards Proposal deadline: September 20, 2022 Awards announced by: October 17, 2022 The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) welcomes applications for grants to fund research consistent with the mission of the Center. The Center advances the generation, communication, and use of new knowledge about the effectiveness of individual lawmakers and U.S. legislative institutions. See our website (www.thelawmakers.org) for more on the CEL. The research receiving support must focus on effective lawmaking and must be designed to make an original scholarly contribution, generating and communicating new…

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August 25, 2022

Blog / Faculty Affiliates / Legislative Anaylsis / Legislative Research

Congressional Town Halls and Legislative Effectiveness

Town hall meetings have long been a way for constituents to hear from their Representatives and Senators face-to-face, and to likewise raise their most pressing policy concerns. Is there a tradeoff between legislators spending their time and effort on town halls instead of focusing their energies on other important policymaking activities? New analysis from the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) Faculty Affiliate Andrew J. Clarke and his co-author Daniel Markovits addresses this question by drawing on more than 23,000 town hall meetings over the past eight years.The authors find that the…

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August 2, 2022

Blog / Events / Faculty Affiliates / Legislative Anaylsis / Uncategorized / Video

Measuring the Effectiveness of Public Leaders

How do we know if public leaders are effective in their jobs? CEL Co-Director Craig Volden, Faculty Affiliate Laurel Harbridge-Yong, and Grant Recipient Beatriz Rey all contributed their insights as part of a panel discussion and Q&A hosted by the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Friday, July 22. They discussed the measurement of effectiveness of lawmakers, as well as how voters and others use effectiveness information to hold elected officials accountable.Watch the panel in its entirety below:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQrwJ9vOKV8

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July 25, 2022

Blog / Conference / Faculty Affiliates / Legislative Anaylsis / Legislative Research

The CEL’s 2022 Award for Best Publication on Effective Lawmaking

The CEL's 2022 Award for Best Publication on Effective Lawmaking This year, in coordination with our Fourth Annual Research Conference, the Center for Effective Lawmaking was pleased to announce the 2022 Award for Best Publication on Effective Lawmaking. The award was presented to Jesse M. Crosson, Alexander C. Furnas, Timothy Lapira, and Casey Burgat for their 2021 article in Legislative Studies Quarterly, titled "Partisan Competition and the Decline in Legislative Capacity among Congressional Offices.” In this paper, the authors take a deep dive into a new (and original) data set drawn from 236,000 quarterly payroll disbursements by…

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June 28, 2022

Blog / Conference / Events / Faculty Affiliates

Inside the 4th Annual Research Conference at the Center for Effective Lawmaking

The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) hosted its Fourth Annual Research Conference on June 13, 2022 at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, Virginia. Dean Ian Solomon, of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, delivered opening comments to over 40 attendees, who were drawn from a wide range of research institutions and organizations across the United States, to discuss and evaluate new ideas put forward regarding the broad topic of effective lawmaking. Consistent with past conferences, the presented works all engaged with different aspects…

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June 27, 2022

Blog / Conversations with Lawmakers / Events / Video

WATCH: Race & Political Representation Inside & Outside of Congress

WATCH: Race & Political Representation Inside & Outside of Congress On March 31, 2022, Alan Wiseman, Co-Director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) moderated a discussion at Vanderbilt University where a distinguished group of panelists explored how those advocating for underrepresented groups have made progress inside and outside of Congress. The panel included Michael Eric Dyson, Centennial Chair and University Distinguished Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies and University Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University; Michael Minta, professor of political science at the University of…

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April 13, 2022

Blog / Events / Faculty Affiliates / Legislative Research / Video

WATCH: A Discussion on the Gender Gap in Political Ambition

WATCH: A Discussion on the Gender Gap in Political Ambition On March 29, 2022, Center for Effective Lawmaking Co-Director Craig Volden interviewed CEL Faculty Affiliate and UVA Professor Jennifer Lawless about the new report she co-authored, "The Gender Gap and Political Ambition." The discussion centered around why, as stated in the report, "men continue to be much more interested than women in running for elective office," her own experiences as a candidate for Congress, and what we can learn to narrow the gap. Watch below to view the discussion and…

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April 7, 2022

Legislative Research

The Gender Gap in Political Ambition

The Gender Gap in Political Ambition In a new report just released, Center for Effective Lawmaking Faculty Affiliate Jennifer Lawless and her co-author, Richard Fox, find that the gender gap in political ambition endures. Despite the number of women serving in Congress doubling in the past twenty years, the views that potential women candidates hold about electoral politics and their own political aspirations don’t seem to have moved. This can be seen in the report assessing political ambition.According to Lawless, “Men continue to be much more interested than women in…

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March 16, 2022